This review was published in The Roanoke Times, Roanoke,
VA., on June 7, 1998 (Horizon, page 4). It is reprinted with the permission
of The Roanoke Times.

TEXT:

Nobody has ever written a book on Frankie Silver that I can
find, a co-worker tells Sheriff Spencer Arrowood. Arrowood has
been invited to witness the electrocution of Fate Harkryder, a man
he helped convict  and whose guilt he now questions. The lawman
feels he can resolve his conflict by revisiting a notorious 1832 murder
case  that of the first woman executed in North Carolina.

Of course, the book that plays out the sheriff's quest is the very
one he needs: Montgomery County writer Sharyn McCrumb's new novel,
The Ballad of Frankie Silver. This, the fifth book in McCrumb's
ballad series, illustrates the quotation (from Pinero)
which prefaces The Rosewood Casket: the future is simply
the past approached through another gate.

In 1832, 18-year-old Frankie Silver, suspected of murdering and dismembering
her husband, was taken from her home in Burke County, N.C. into Morganton.
At her trial, she did not testify. At the July 1833 hanging, Silver's
father preempted her final words with the admonition,  Die with
it in you, Frankie! So without ever giving voice to her story,
Frances Stewart Silver died, and a chorus of voices soon rose to tell
it for her.

McCrumb wisely chooses to use Frankie's voice very selectively, always
for emotional effect. The author weaves the 1830s story into the contemporary
one, alternating between the third-person narrator of the Arrowood
-Harkryder story and Burgess Gaither, the young Morgantonian who tells
Frankie's story in first person, from his experience as Superior Court
clerk. This requires a switch in voice, from modern idiom to the style
of an 1830s lawyer, and McCrumb manages both voices successfully,
though Gaither's takes a little getting used to.

McCrumb's research into the Frankie Silver story is extensive. She
has written a social register of 1830s Morganton and a political analysis
of ante-bellum Western North Carolina. On both levels, the novel is
an examination of the death row experience and the social mores which
keep the death penalty alive.

There's so much source material on the Frankie Silver legend that
the present-day story might seem slight by comparison. But Fate Harkryder's
execution date looms large, and after the Silver story concludes,
the narrative heads toward Tennessee's electric chair, switching tracks
with no loss of pace.

The similarities in the two plots seem a bit too tidy, and McCrumb
throws in a bad joke phone call at a moment of high tension. But both
Fate Harkryder's and Frankie Silver's stories ring true, and the novel
ends beautifully, driving home McCrumb's own conclusion that Frankie
Silver had much to tell us about equal justice under the law, and
that not much has changed since she went to her death on a bright
July afternoon 164 years ago.

Readers may feel that McCrumb's version of these events is as close
to truth as we are likely to get, which is the impression the book
is designed to give. But more important than factual accuracy is McCrumb's
fidelity to the deep feelings Silver's story taps, feelings which
led nearly three dozen prominent Morganton ladies to send a clemency
petition to their governor. North Carolina folklorist and National
Humanities Center Director Dan Patterson, also working on a book on
Silver, maintains that ballads hinge on emotional, not literal, truth.
In Tom Davenport's recent film about the case, singer Marina Trivette
admits, There are some ballads we can't sing because we can't
get to the end of `em for crying. It is this chord of feeling
which McCrumb has struck, and in her capable hands, Frankie's ballad
resonates.

Lana Whited teaches English and journalism at Ferrum College
and has done extensive research on true-crime novels.